November 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Essex Journal (November 1, 1776).

“A Boarding-School.”

“EVENING SCHOOL for Youth of Both Sexes.”

“EVENING SCHOOL at the Town-House.”

“An Evening School.”

Compositors usually did not cluster together newspaper advertisements inserted for similar purposes, yet that was the case for four advertisements for schools that appeared one after the other in the November 1, 1776, edition of the Essex Journal.  Each advertisement also ran in the previous issue, but they were scattered throughout the other notices.

The first announced “A Boarding-School” in the headline.  Eleanor Druitt relocated from Boston to Newburyport in the spring of 1775, about a month before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  Despite the disruptions caused by the war, she operated “a Boarding, and Day-School, for the reception of young Ladies, near the Assembly-House.”  She planned to begin a new term on “Monday the 28th of October,” so instruction had already commenced when her advertisement ran for the second time on November 1.

In the next advertisement, John Vinal declared his intention to open an “EVENING SCHOOL for Youth of both Sexes … at the NORTH SCHOOL HOUSE” on the “first Monday Evening in November.”  Vinal’s school offered some competition for Druitt’s school, but competed even more directly against Nicolas Pike’s “EVENING SCHOOL at the Town-House” that would begin its new term “on the first Monday in November next.”  Pike’s notice was dated October 1 and the notation that appeared on the final line, “44-46,” indicated that it was supposed to run in issues 144, 145, and 146 on October 4, 11, and 18.  Vinal’s advertisement was dated October 24 with “47-49” on the final line to remind the compositor to insert it in the issues for October 25 and November 1 and 8.

Yet the Essex Journal did not discontinue Pike’s advertisement after the three insertions indicated in the notation.  The fourth advertisement, dated October 11, may help to explain that.  Robert Long proclaimed that he “DETERMINES to open an Evening School the first Monday in November next” in a notice that first ran on October 11 with “45.-47.” as the notation on the final line.  Perhaps Pike saw the advertisement for the competing school and instructed the printing office to extend the run of his own notice.  Long may have been similarly concerned and desired additional insertions of his advertisement.  The notation with issue numbers disappeared on October 25, the first time that Druitt and Vinal ran their advertisements, though the compositor may have dropped the notation to achieve uniform length for each column on that page (and Long’s advertisement did appear at the bottom of the column).  Alternately, perhaps neither Pike nor Long requested that their advertisements continue running in the Essex Journal.  Both should have been discontinued before issue 148 on November 1, according to the original notations, yet the compositor may have continued running them to fill the page.  An advertisement for an auction for a house with a “45.-47.” notation ran immediately below Long’s notice.

The schoolmasters and schoolmistress may have been deploying their advertisements strategically … or day-to-day operations in the printing office may have explained the additional insertions of some of the advertisements for schools opening in Newburyport in the fall of 1776.  Whatever the explanation, four advertisements for schools running one after the other was an unusual example of clustering notices placed for a similar purpose.  Early American newspapers did not tend to classify or categorize advertisements.

Slavery Advertisements Published November 1, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Gazette (November 1, 1776).

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Essex Journal (November 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (November 1, 1776).

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Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (November 1, 1776).

October 31

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Independent Chronicle (October 31, 1776).

“PUFFING, is not his Talent.”

On the last day of October in 1776, John Langdon published an advertisement addressed “TO THE PUBLIC in general; and all his good Friends, in Special,” in which he offered his services as an auctioneer.  He informed readers of the Independent Chronicle that they could find him on Fleet Street in Boston.

In his lively notice, Langdon commented on a common practice in other advertisements: “PUFFING.”  Many advertisers, including other auctioneers, bestowed elaborate praise on themselves and on the goods and services that they sold.  The Oxford English Dictionary notes that “puffery” appeared in print as early as 1731.  It originally meant “grandiloquent or bombastic language.”  Entrepreneurs adopted the practice to market goods as part of the consumer revolution in both Britain and the colonies.  By the time Langdon published his advertisement, “puffery” meant the “action or practice of ‘puffing’ someone or something; extravagant or undeserved praise, esp. for advertising or promotional purposes; writing, etc., intended to have this effect.”  Puffing and puffery had negative connotations since they suggested unwarranted exaggeration and perhaps even deception.

Langdon sought to assure his clients that “PUFFING, is not his talent,” yet he wanted them to know that he would make sincere efforts to “exert himself, and use his utmost Endeavours, to give Satisfaction to his Employers.”  They could depend on his “Fidelity, Assiduity, and Dexterity” when they engaged his services as an auctioneer.  In other words, he was faithful to his clients, seeking the best prices for them rather than for bidders; he gave constant and close attention to his business; and he adroitly applied cleverness and intelligence to running his auctions to achieve the best possible outcomes for his clients.  In a nota bene, he also made clear that “Moderate Commissions, will content him.”  He did not angle to claim a significant share of the proceeds from items his clients put up for sale.  Instead, he set a fair rate his part in successful transactions that resulted in the sale of their merchandise.  No part of his business, then, was over the top.  Rather than “PUFFING” his skills, Langdon wanted prospective customers to associate humble competence with his auctioneering.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 31, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Continental Journal (October 31, 1776).

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Continental Journal (October 31, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 31, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 31, 1776).

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Maryland Gazette (October 31, 1776).

October 30

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 30, 1776).

“The extraordinary Advance in the Price of Paper … has obliged them to raise the Price.”

In the fall of 1776, William Hall, David Hall, and William Sellers announced that they would raise the price of their newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, starting on January 1, 1777.  William Bradford and Thomas Bradford made the same decision about the Pennsylvania Journal.  So did John James Humphreys, Jr., for the Pennsylvania Ledger and John Dunlap for Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  Although they competed for subscribers and advertisers, the printers of those newspapers collaborated in setting a new price and informing current and prospective subscribers.  They placed a joint notice, dated October 29, that appeared in each newspaper.

It first ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on October 30.  The Halls and Sellers made it the first item in the first column on the first page of the Pennsylvania Gazette to increase the chances that readers saw it.  The Bradfords did the same in the Pennsylvania Journal.  Humphreys followed their lead in the Pennsylvania Ledger on November 2.  When Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet came out on November 5, it also featured the joint advertisement in the same spot on the first page.

By announcing this change together, the “Publishers of the several weekly NEWS-PAPERS in this City” showed solidarity in the face of “the extraordinary Advance in the Price of Paper, and other Materials in the Printing Business” that “obliged them to raise the Price to FIFTEEN SHILLINGS per Annum.”  Printers throughout the new nation reported similar challenges during the Revolutionary War.  The printers in Philadelphia “hope[d] that their Customers will not take it amiss to find that Price charged from and after the First Day of January next,” yet they recognized that some subscribers would likely wish to withdraw.  For those “who should not incline to have the Papers sent after that Time,” the printers requested that they visit the appropriate office to settle accounts.  Otherwise, it was an opt out system rather than an opt in system.  If subscribers did not opt out, then the printers “shall conclude they agree to the advanced Price” and would continue to deliver newspapers for the higher subscription fee.  In placing a joint advertisement, the printers may have intended to reduce anger or frustration directed from their own subscribers directed at their newspaper by making it clear that the printers of several weekly newspapers found the price increase necessary and none set a higher price than any of the others.

This agreement among the “Publishers of the several weekly NEWS-PAPERS in this City” did not include Henrich Miller and Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, a German newspaper, nor Benjamin Towne’s Pennsylvania Evening Post that came out three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 30, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Pennsylvania Gazette (October 30, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Gazette (October 30, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 30, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 30, 1776).

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Pennsylvania Journal (October 30, 1776).

October 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 29, 1776).

“Different kinds of beer, as usual, equal in quality to any in this city.”

Francis Wade was back in business and he wanted the public to know it!  In late October 1776, the brewer began running advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post that both acknowledged that his “absence for some time past obliged him to shut up his brewery” in Philadelphia and announced that he “has began to brew for the season.”  In early November, he inserted the same advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette in his effort to increase his market penetration by reaching more prospective customers.

Wade did not explain his absence, nor did he give directions to his brewery.  Perhaps he assumed that “his former customers and others that are disposed to make trial of his beer” knew where to find him.  For several months in late 1774 and early 1775, he ran advertisements that directed “his old country customers” to his new location at the corner of Fourth and Race Streets.  Perhaps Wade believed that his brewery became such a familiar location once he established himself there that he did not need to elaborate on his location, despite his recent absence and suspension of production.

Now that Wade’s brewery was operating again, he hoped that his former clientele and new customers would purchase the “different kinds of beer” offered there.  He pledged that all of them were “equal in quality to any in this city,” putting him in competition with other brewers that included Robert Hare and his Best American Draught Porter.  He claimed that customers could expect such quality “as usual,” suggesting that he believed his beer already earned that reputation and he wanted consumers to recall that was the case.  Even if he exaggerated, Wade stood to benefit from such puffery.  Prospective customers who had never tried his beer, he may have reasoned, might find such assertions convincing when they contemplated “mak[ing] trial of his beer” in their own homes or serving it in their taverns.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 29, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Postscript to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Postscript to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

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Postscript to Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 29, 1776).

October 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] October 28, 1776.
“WANTED … a Parcel of CONGRESS NOTES, with which he intends to paper some Rooms.”

It was a counterfeit advertisement that mocked the rebel congress.  The October 28, 1776, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, published in a city occupied by British forces carried an advertisement that proclaimed that a “Gentleman” who was “fond of Curiosities” and planned to travel to England “WANTED” a “Parcel of CONGRESS NOTES, with which he intends to paper some Rooms.”  Money issued by the Continental Congress, the advertisement sneered, was not worth the paper it was printed on.  It might as well be used as wallpaper!

From 1775 to 1779, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, “Congress ordered 11 emissions of Continental Currency to the amount of 226 million Spanish milled Dollars.”  By the time this advertisement appeared, Congress had already issued paper currency on five occasions (May 10, 1775; November 29, 1775; February 17, 1776; May 9, 1776; and July 22, 1776) and was just days away from doing so again on November 2, 1776.  “At first the currency circulated at par with the Spanish milled dollar, but since the states were simultaneously emitting their own bills of credit and debt certificates to cover their war expenses, the glut of bills issued without sound financial resources soon led to depreciation of all forms of circulating paper, but especially that of Congress.”

Such news was familiar to the anonymous advertiser and readers of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, making the taunt even more biting.  “Those, who wish to make something of their Stock in that Commodity,” the advertisement proclaimed, “shall, if they are clean and fit for the Purpose, receive at the Rate of One Guinea per Thousand, for all they can bring, before the Expiration of the present Month.”  In exchange for stacks of Continental currency, the advertiser offered just one guinea (or a pound and a shilling).  Furthermore, the advertiser confided in a nota bene that it was “expected they will soon be much lower.”  Perhaps word that the Continental Congress considered a new emission had reached New York.  The advertisement preemptively undermined the value of those notes, yet another salvo fired in a war of words that occurred during the war for independence.

Continental Currency, Serial No. 45960 series C, Issued by Congress on 17 February 1776 for One Sixth of a Dollar. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

Slavery Advertisements Published October 28, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Connecticut Courant (October 28, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (October 28, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (October 28, 1776).

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New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury [New York] (October 28, 1776).